


I'll Race Across the Stars For You

by faequeentitania



Series: Reylo Week 2018 [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Blood and Injury, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Injury, Near Death, Rescue, Rescue Missions, Reylo Week, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 17:01:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14453802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faequeentitania/pseuds/faequeentitania
Summary: His pain tore through her, taking her knees out from under her and leaving her gasping for breath. It wasn't even a question, wasn't even a hesitation that she would go to him. She had to save him.





	I'll Race Across the Stars For You

**Author's Note:**

> Day four of [Reylo Week 2018](https://reylo-week-2018.tumblr.com). Prompt: wounds. [anerdslife4me](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anerdslife4me) has asked me for a sequel to this one so maybe that will happen. I am kind of a sucker for "nurse them back to health" fics.

She felt it the moment it happened.

She thought it would disappear, this connection of theirs. Snoke claimed to have created it, it should have disappeared with his death.

Either he lied, or he had strengthened the bond between them too much; it didn’t need him, now, to connect them. No matter how far she ran, she could always feel Ben Solo; his presence in the back of her mind like a constant, thrumming pressure.

Sometimes it manifested like it had done when she was on Ahch-To- his presence in the Falcon, on a dusty planet of some Outer Rim hideout, deep in a secret Resistance base- feeling all too real.

They didn’t speak. There was nothing for them to say, the pain between them laid out through their connection, throbbing and raw every time they laid eyes on each other.

She tried to shut him out. The Jedi texts were difficult to decipher, but she was making progress. Progress enough to learn how important meditation was; calming your mind, connecting with the Force, letting it flow through you with serenity.

When she slipped into it, just meditating and feeling all the thrumming, beautiful pieces of the universe, it opened the bond between them. She had run from it, at first, but after gathering her wits about her she realized it might be her only way out. If she could pick it apart, change the flow of energy between them, maybe she could cut it off, redirect it somewhere else.

 _This is futile,_ his voice whispered through the bond, clear as a bell in her head, and she frowned, pushing at him over the connection, trying to force him away from her. _The Force wants us connected for some reason, we’re not going to be able to severe it._

_I’m going to try anyway. Shut up._

A mixture of amusement and exasperation flickered along the edges of their bond, and she frowned harder, pushing him away again.

He was right. He was right and she hated it, but if anything, their connection only got _stronger._

She could feel him constantly. Where before she had had to seek him out, look for those tendrils of metaphysical string connecting them in order to be aware of them, now he was a constant thrum in the back of her brain.

Their face-to-face visions became longer as well. Still as silent, still as painful, but heart-wrenchingly drawn out now.

It was fucking misery.

And then she felt it happen.

Pain; physical, wrenching pain clawing its way through her chest so hard and fast it took her knees out from under her.

Flashes across her mind’s eye; his private ship, what should have been a short journey to the surface of a planet, stopped cold by the shot of a blaster. His own men, white Stormtrooper helmets glaring unforgivingly in the ship’s interior lighting.

_“Supreme Leader Hux sends his regards.”_

Anger. White-hot, consuming, blinding him momentarily to the pain of his wound, and they’re all dead, and his saber is falling from his weakening grip.

She stole a med-droid. She stole a med-droid and the _Falcon_ and followed the tether from his soul to hers, no other thought in her head besides _Don’t you dare fucking die._

She sent the thought determinately over at him, made sure he got the message loud and clear. She was met with wry amusement at her determination, and she pushed at him over the bond meanly.

_I mean it. Hold on. I’m coming for you._

She stretched the _Falcon_ to the limit, testing Han Solo’s boast about the Kessel Run, and the old girl strained to get her there as fast as she could. She needed to get to him _now_ , not twenty minutes from now.

A wheezed, wet cough scared the daylights out of her, and she spun around, looking back into the center of the ship.

 _“Ben!”_ she shouted, racing from her seat to where he was laid out beside the holo-table, a crumpled heap of black and blood.

She was almost sick at the horrible, gaping wound in his chest, making a terrible sucking noise with each of his struggled breaths.

“Ben,” she whispered, her voiced edged with tears she was determined to keep from falling, and she cupped his face in her hands.

He was still so far away, still too many parsecs to clear before she could help him; she was seeing him on the _Falcon_ but he was still bleeding out on the floor of his stupid, shiny First Order ship. Her heart was beating so hard it _hurt._

He looked at her with glazed, barely coherent eyes, his mouth stained with blood, and she traced his cheekbones with her thumbs.

“I’m coming,” she forced out in a teary whisper. “You hear me? I’m coming to get you, you just have to hold on.”

_Why?_

He didn’t speak, but his voice filled her head, along with every emotion roiling inside him. He didn’t have the strength for barriers anymore.

_Because our story doesn’t end here._

His sadness and grief washed over her, and his eyes grew glassy before he vanished, leaving her holding empty air.

He was fading. She could still feel him, but he was slipping away like a handful of sand, and she held onto him all the harder.

The _Falcon_ dropped out of hyperspace right outside of a planet’s orbit. His ship must have been on autopilot, landed somewhere below without even knowing that its cargo was doomed.

She could barely feel him by the time she was barking orders at the med-droid to follow her, the First Order ship’s gangplank almost bursting apart with how aggressively she used the Force to yank it down, but she didn’t care; they’d be abandoning the ship here anyway. She just needed to get to him.

It was even worse than she had seen in the vision, the bodies of his assailants strewn violently around the ship, and there was so much blood she nearly slipped on it. She crumbled to her knees beside him, pushing him as gently as she could from his side and onto his back. His skin was ashen and his eyes closed, his messy hair lank with sweat and blood, and his bloody chest scarcely moving. If she couldn’t still feel him, couldn’t hold on to his lifeforce through their bond, she would have thought she was too late.

“Help him!” she barked at the med-droid, which beeped and whirled and set immediately to work.

She was shaking, watching with barely contained anguish as the droid sealed a breathing mask over his mouth and nose, forcing oxygen into his lungs as it pushed a tube between his ribs; simultaneously draining the fluid in his chest and pumping bacta into the wound.

In what must have only been minutes but felt like hours, the droid was beeping at her that he was stabilizing, but they needed to return him to the base, somewhere he could be put in a bacta suit.

She nodded, closing her eyes for a moment to take a handful of deep breaths, centering herself before reaching out through their connection.

He was there. Weak and unconscious, but holding steady, and she breathed out shakily.

 _Everything is going to be okay._ She wasn’t sure who she was trying to reassure, him or herself.

The droid carried him from the First Order transport and back to the _Falcon_ , and Rey cleared a space for him on the floor of the main hold. He was too tall for the alcove, and she couldn’t bare to have him as far away as the crew quarters.

His hair left streaks of blood on the folded blanket she tucked under his head, and Rey suddenly found a sob catching in the back of her throat.

 _Don’t you dare fucking die,_ she thought furiously at him again, forcing herself to take deep, calming breaths; he wasn’t out of the woods, he needed her to get herself together and get them back to base.

She plotted a course back to the Resistance base, sending a message ahead of her, warning them to have a med crew ready and waiting for her arrival. She did not specify who for.

There was blood all over the controls, which would be a bitch and a half to clean later, but she couldn’t take the time to clean herself up, too focused on getting them home.

This was not how Rey imagined seeing Ben Solo return to his father’s ship. This was not how she wanted to see him again outside of their Force visions.

Yet this was what she had, and Rey threw caution to the wind, trusting the _Falcon_ to fly her course without Rey at the helm so she could return to his side.

He was even paler, and Rey’s hands were shaking as she sank to her knees by his shoulder.

She could hear the med-droid’s monitor of his vital signs; the respirator making a whooshing sound as it pushed air into his lungs, and every irregular, weak pulse of his heart sent hers into an anxious flutter, terrified that it could be his last.

 _You have to pull through this,_ she sent along their bond, coiling her hold on his life force a little tighter. _Please, Ben. Don’t give up. I’m not. I’m not, okay? I haven’t given up on you._

Her hands were already covered in his blood, so she didn’t care about getting more on her as she petted her palm over his bloody, tangled hair.

She felt a sob rising in the back of her throat again, and this time she couldn’t fight it, scrunching her eyes closed and leaning down to press her forehead against his. He was cool, far too cool, and she begged the Force with everything she had to give him the strength to fight, to pull through this.

When Rey heard the engine of the _Falcon_ give a whine that told her it was gearing down to drop out of hyperspace, she forced herself away from Ben’s still form, wiping her tears haphazardly on the shoulders of her shirt as she moved rapidly to the cockpit.

The coms buzzed to life as soon as the ship completed the drop from hyperspace, “Falcon, this is Red One, do you copy?”

“I copy,” Rey’s voice sounded hoarse, so she hurriedly cleared her throat. “I copy, Red One.”

“Falcon, you left base without authorization and next thing we know you’re sending orders for medbay to be prepped, what the hell is going on?”

Their irritation was warranted, but Rey didn’t have the energy to explain, and certainly not to a simple com operator.

“Just have it ready, and alert Chewbacca and General Organa of my return, tell them it’s urgent,” Rey commanded, guiding the ship toward the planet and entering the landing commands.

“Falcon-”

“Falcon out!” Rey snapped, shutting off the coms, her nerves already frayed without being pushed by some Resistance recruit.

Chewbacca was there at the end of the ramp as soon as the _Falcon_ landed, and his frightened yowl of concern reminded her that she was covered in blood.

“It’s not mine,” she reassured him, rushing down the ramp and looking around frantically for the paramedics she had ordered to be at the ready, relief flooding through her when she found them hurrying toward them.

She didn’t have to explain further when the med-droid followed her out of the ship, carrying Ben’s limp body. Chewbacca’s eyes widened, and the despairing sound he made cut into Rey’s heart.

“He’s alive,” her voice was watery, “I got to him in time, Chewie, he’s alive.”

The paramedics had reached them, and she didn’t have time for their wide-eyed stares.

“Help him!” she barked, breaking them out of their trance as they immediately got him from the med-droid and onto a proper stretcher. Then her and Chewbacca were following close on their heels as they whisked him off to the medbay.

They get to work on his wound, and all Rey could do was watch.

She was barely aware of Finn until he was barking orders at the small crowd of people pressed in the doorway of the medbay, trying to catch a glimpse of the felled First Order leader. “Everyone go on your way! All the work needing to get done doesn’t disappear just because of a medical emergency! Back to your stations!”

They dispersed, some grumbling, some quiet, but when Finn turned back to her she finally hugged him.

“Thank you,” she murmured, and he squeezed her tight.

Finn and Chewbacca both waited with her as she watched them work on putting Ben back together.

He flatlined once during the procedure, and Rey was sure that her heart stopped along with his. She couldn’t _see_ , she couldn’t _breathe_ , desperately scrambling at the tether of the Force between them, holding on, demanding him to _stay alive!_. For a few horrible seconds, it was only Chewbacca and Finn’s strong arms that kept her together until she could hear the beep of the heart monitor again, feel his life flare in answer to her demand.

By the time they got him in a bacta suit, the worst of the peril over and nothing left to do but wait, Rey was so emotionally exhausted she felt numb.

“You should go get cleaned up,” Finn encouraged her gently. “There’s nothing left for you to do.”

Ben’s blood had dried on her clothes and skin, a garish reminder of just how close he had come to death, and Finn’s words made her hyper aware of it. She nodded, and Chewbacca stroked her head gently.

 _“I’ll be here with him,”_ he promised her, _“Don’t worry.”_

She gave a little nod, and pushed herself to leave the medbay.

She couldn’t completely get the dried blood out from under her fingernails, but the rest of her was clean and in fresh clothes as she immediately went back to him after her shower.

Rey froze in the doorway as her eyes landed on the sight of Leia Organa, standing silently over her son’s bedside with an unreadable expression on her face.

“Come in, Rey,” Leia said quietly, her eyes never leaving Ben’s face.

Rey stepped into the room, and Chewbacca greeted her with a quiet trill from where he had set himself up in a chair a few feet from the doorway. She gave him a little smile in return, then moved slowly toward Ben’s bed.

It was the first time she had been able to get near him since taking him off the _Falcon_ , and her heart hurt to see the washed out pallor of his skin under the medbay’s lights. There was still dried blood in his hair, but they had wiped away the blood from his body.

She could see the wound through the clear bacta suit, clean, but no less horrific, with tubes of bacta circulating through it to speed up its healing as the respirators dutifully kept his lungs expanding and contracting.

“I hate the sound of these things,” Leia suddenly said softly, and Rey looked up, while Leia’s eyes never left Ben’s face. “The respirators. Vader sounded like that.”

Rey didn’t know what to say to that, so she remained silent, just looking at the General’s solemn features.

“I won’t ask you how you knew he had been hurt,” Leia said after another moment, finally tearing her eyes away from Ben to look at Rey, and Rey felt apprehension fall heavy into her stomach. She had not told anyone about her bond with Ben, and she knew her sudden appearance with him would look suspect at best, possibly treasonous at worst. “You will have to come out with it eventually, of course, but not right now. Right now, I’m just going to thank the Force that you did, and that you brought him home. Thank you, Rey.”

Rey felt tears spring to her eyes at the sincerity of Leia’s words, and she gave a little nod, any answer she could give choked up in her throat.

Leia embraced her before she left, leaving Rey and Chewbacca to stand vigil over him.

He spent almost a week in a medical coma, and Rey found herself talking to his quiet, unconscious mind through their bond.

Mostly it was frivolous conversation. What repairs needed to be done on the _Falcon_ , what food was available to them that day, what gossip was circulating the base about who was sleeping with who. Stuff she would never bother to talk about normally, but it was something to fill the silence the absence of his voice left behind.

When they finally deemed him healed enough to be allowed consciousness again, Rey spent the whole day on edge, restless, desperate for his voice and the comfort of his mind. It shamed her how much she had missed it, when not all that long ago she would have given anything to be allowed to cut it away.

He was slow to come around, bouts of barely-consciousness slipping away back into sleep for much of the day.

_Rey?_

Rey’s heart leapt. His eyes were still closed, but his mind was becoming aware, reaching out to her in dim confusion.

 _I’m here,_ she reassured him. _I’m right here._

She tightened her grip on his hand slightly, and he gave a weak squeeze back before his eyes fluttered open.

He looked at her with heavy-lidded eyes, his mind still sluggish and a bit dazed. Rey squeezed his hand again with a little smile.

“Welcome back,” she said softly.

He just looked at her for a long moment, and Rey met his gaze unflinchingly.

_Where am I?_

_Safe,_ she reassured him.

_You brought me to the Resistance._

It wasn’t phrased as a question, but she nodded anyway. _There wasn’t much of a choice. You were dying. They could help._

His eyes closed and his throat worked to swallow, a heavy dread settling into him and pulling at her nerves.

 _Ben,_ she said his name imploringly, and his eyes slowly opened. _I promise that you’re safe. Anyone who wants to hurt you would have to go through me first. And a very protective wookie._

His eyes widened slightly, and Rey gave him another little smile.

_Considering the bowcaster scar I have on my abdomen, I doubt that._

_Doubt it all you want. But he’s been here watching over you just as much as I have. He nearly threw a medic across the room for bruising your arm putting an IV in._

He knew she was telling the truth, she couldn’t lie to him with their minds so open to each other, and a raw, emotional feeling came over him that Rey didn’t even know how to quantify.

She took his hand between both of hers comfortingly, and Ben closed his eyes again with a thick swallow.

“Trust me,” she murmured softly, stroking her fingers along the back of his hand, and Ben finally gave a tiny nod.

_I trust you._

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Feel free to come say hi on [tumblr](https://faequeentitania.tumblr.com).


End file.
